Baked Panzanella Caprese

Earlier this week someone asked me who my biggest influences are in the kitchen.

My Mom, of course, immediately springs to mind.

PS did you know “Iowa Mom Eats” is like the third most searched term for my blog? You love her as much as I do! ;)

MY OTHER RECIPES

My Mom passed on the desire to make home-cooked meals for my family no matter how hectic the week gets, then sit down to enjoy them together.

While Ben and I don’t get to physically sit down with one another for dinner as often as I’d like during the week, due to varying work schedules, he knows he’s always got a plate of somethin’ waiting for him when he gets home. ;)

Celebrity chefs I followed when I first got interested in cooking after college also influenced me in the kitchen. Women like Ina Garten & Giada Di Laurentiis who cook simple, uncomplicated recipes with in-season ingredients were, and continue to be, my absolute favorites to watch and glean inspiration from.

(FYI, I may or may not want to, uh, BE Ina Garten when I grow up. Oooo, or at least dress up like her for Halloween!! Ben can be Jeffrey! Now to track down a denim shirt and fake bangs… )

Ahem, anyways…

Tonight’s dinner really sums up what I’ve picked up from all these different sources of inspiration. It’s what I’m all about in the kitchen. A perfect combination of homemade & satisfying, simple & seasonal: Baked Panzanella Caprese. Soul-satisfying flavors like salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic, meld with gooey mozzarella, fragrant basil, warm tomato and toasty bread in an intensely delicious dish.

As Ben put it, “this is seriously the best thing you’ve made in a really long time.” Gee, thanks?! ;)

Baked Panzanella Caprese is as easy as it is mouthwatering. It’s one of those “no recipe” kind of recipes. Once you’ve got all the ingredients together, you just kind of pile them in a baking dish as you see fit.

Here’s what you’ll need for 2 servings:

2 large tomatoes, sliced into 1/2″ slices

salt & pepper

balsamic vinegar

6-7 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese

2 cloves garlic

10-15 leaves of fresh basil

4 slices good quality white bread (this is not the place to use store-bought and/or whole wheat!)

Top with thick-cut, fresh white bread, then drizzle with more extra virgin olive oil and salt & pepper.

I think individual sized baking dishes add to the rustic charm of this dish. :)

Bake for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, then dig into the best thing you’ve had all week.

The garlic permeates every bite, while the crispy, salty bread soaks up the warm tomato and balsamic vinegar drippings. OH MY GOOD GOSH, this was incredible. My mouth is still watering!!!

Now, while my Mom and several celebrity chefs have influenced my cooking, my dear old Dad has definitely influenced my eating. Namely imparting a wicked sweet tooth to his daughter. Thinking I might be able to convince Ben to take me Dairy Queen for a mini blizzard for dessert before football starts tonight?! Wish me luck!!!

~~~~

Who has been YOUR biggest influence in the kitchen? Favorite celebrity chef?

Definitely my mom. Stuff she threw together that I never gave a thought to when I was little are my favorite dishes now! i mean, I always liked dinner, but I totally took it for granted, you know? Her fried potatoes and salmon patties are still the best i’ve ever tasted!

Ina and Jeffrey have got to be THE cutest Food Network couple. I mean, I just want to watch them all the time. Adorable.

I used to watch Epicurious on the Discovery Channel with my mom when I was a kid. That definitely got me interested. But my mom was definitely the defining food muse for me. She taught me how to bake bread and make a killer vegetable soup.

My favorite celeb chef is Elie Krieger. She is a dietician, so her recipes are healthy. I like all of her cookbooks. She used to be on the Food Network, but not sure she is any more. I don’t watch TV much these days!

My mom was the same way, always a home cooked meal. We never had packaged food in the house, she always made everything from scratch.
My biggest influences are Ina (my husband always makes fun of her and “Jeffery”!), I have a lot of Cooking Light recipes that I keep going back to and my Cooks Illustrated New Best Recipes book, you can’t go wrong with anything in that book. I’ve gifted it many times and everyone loves it!

My mom baked bread from scratch, made pickles, canned fruits and jellies, and taught me that anyone can make a trip to the store and follow a recipe, but great cooks know how to make something from what’s on hand.
I taught my 13 year old son to make chicken parmesan tonight and then bragged about it on Facebook. Does that make him a celebrity chef? lol

I come from a long line of non-cooks, cutting my teeth as a fledgling baker, and got into heavy-duty cooking once I had a kitchen in college. My best friend’s mom growing up was an awesome cook – the kind who never measured or used recipes and always had picture-perfect dishes. I’m a big fan of Guy Fieri and Alton Brown.

My mom cooked a ton and I helped her, so that’s where I found my love of cooking. When I moved out on my own initially, I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed in the kitchen. I’m not sure when I turned into such a confident cook!

My dad definitely had the most influence! Some of my favorite memories are spending time together in the kitchen as he taught me to bake, eyeball measurements and tossing things together, ‘because it seems like they go together’. Thanks for sharing your inspirations, it brought back some great memories and smiles as I thought of mine~ I also like Ina and Giada, but I used to love watching Julia!

My biggest influence (celebrity wise) is Alton Brown. I even started a Julie/Julia-style blog and began cooking his recipes, but my career sometimes gets in the way of achieving that project, so it is on hold. Still though . . . I’ve made about ten of his recipes, and I have learned so much about cooking already.

Like you – my mom has been my biggest influence in the kitchen. She always made wonderful homemade recipes for my family. I have continued the tradition with my own girls in my kitchen. I love making new memories for my own girls. :)

My mom was a big influence. Once my sister & I got into high school, it was pretty much up to us to make dinner for ourselves. When we moved out, we experimented a lot in the kitchen–She was vegetarian at the time & we got pretty good at making meals we both could eat. And when I had cable, I watched Food Network & would experiment on my husband! Now cookbooks & food blogs are my inspriation…And I’m making that Baked Panzanella Caprese ASAP!

OMG, that looks AMAZING! I felt like caps were deserved for that one! Let’s see, I think my mom is a great cook, but I’ve always really admired my Aunt Lyn, my dad’s twin sister. She and her husband cook all the time, very low cost, and it’s so simple but so good. Plus she makes the best pies and they make everything,….everything….,from scratch. Naturally, we do Thanksgiving at their house a lot! Celebrity chefs I like Ina & Giada too.

I met your mom today! Our encounter was brief while I helped her find some gift items, but I could instantly tell she’s a very proud mom and grandma. Thanks for sharing your wonderful family with all of us!

p.s. – If I liked tomatoes (actually, I like everything MADE with tomatoes, but just can’t eat one – despite my own mom’s efforts to get me to do so when I was growing up!), I’d be all over this recipe!

love your blog. found it via googling “how to run longer” or something like that. I hope you don’t mind that I’ll be doing some backtracking and reading some of your older posts for inspiration. thanks!

My favorite celebrity chef is Emeril. I worked in his restaurant in college as a cocktail waitress and he was the nicest guy in the world and so passionate about food. Everything I’ve ever tried in any of his restaurants has been delicious!

Ina and her husband are totes adorable! I’ll always remember one specific episode where she cooks chicken for him because he’s away all week and it’s his favorite meal :) Tomatoes with a sprinkle of salt and splash of balsamic vinegar is a great dish!

Yum! This dinner looks delicious! I am a big fan of Giada! I met her at her book signing a couple of years ago and she is super nice! I was really nervous that she wasn’t going to be as nice as she seems on tv but she definitely was! :)

My favorite chef is Emeril; BAM! (Had to) I too am from the south and love how he incorporates going green and using local produce into the classic southern dishes. I also adore Giada, Ina, and Rachel Ray. Your dinner looks insane by the way! I can’t wait to make it! Have a great weekend :-D

My mother and grandmother are my biggest influence. They’re both amazing cooks (and bakers) and you never leave their homes hungry!
I also look to several food blogs for inspiration, with yours at the top of the list!

My mom is my biggest influence, for sure! I never laid a hand on cooking utensils growing up (unless it was for baking cookies) because she was always in charge of doing it all in the kitchen, but just WATCHING her doing her thing for years was what imparted a natural ease to cooking for me. And an instinct for what flavor combinations would work.

GREAT sounding recipe!! Quick question. In one of your photos you display two types of bread cuts. One baking dish displayed larger peices while the other had the smaller cubes. Did one work better than the other? Also, do you think you’d be able to do this in non-individual (haha or well “regular sized” baking) dish? It looks soo good!

Your Mom seems so sweet. I think she needs a cooking blog! I love Giada, The Neely’s, Paula, The Pioneer Woman of course and Kelsey Nixon (Kelsey’s Essentials on The Cooking Channel). I totally love your recipes as well, and have been finding inspiration in them a lot lately since I have come across your blog.

[…] to turn cooler, I tend to crave more comforting and warm dinners. I saw this recipe on another food blog I follow and immediately rushed out to buy a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese. The high price (I don’t […]

I loved this recipe! My husband is the “chef” in our household, so I was excited when I saw this and thought, “I can make that!” The two grocery stores I visited this weekend didn’t have large loaves of white bread, so I used a loaf of crusty garlic bread – so good! Thanks for sharing!!

[…] but certainly not least on the weekly menu is Baked Panzanella Caprese. This recipe is from Iowa Girl Eats, who adapted it from Giada De Laurentiis. This just sounds indulgent and decadent and OH SO GOOD. […]

[…] I also get a lot of inspiration from my Mom. She’s the reason I love cooking so much in the first place, and I often think back to the meals she’d whip up back in the day when trying to decide what […]

HI…just wondering..would this be used as an appetizer or your main meal? I want to make it and wasn’t sure..was going to make it and serve with a salad and nothing else but wasn’t sure if that would be enough? (for 2 ppl)…thanks – looks delish!

Leave a Comment

hi, i’m kristin!

I'm a Midwestern wife and Mom of two little boys. After being diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2013, Iowa Girl Eats is a place I share delicious and approachable gluten-free recipes made with everyday, in-season ingredients. Visit my Recipe Index for inspiration!MORE ABOUT ME

I Support

Iowa Girl Eats is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.